Angry Birds

  No...this isn't anything to do with Alfred Hitchcock. As I am writing this, I am also wondering how many people out there know who Hitchcock is. ( My son had no clue) Which makes me feel a bit old...but then I digress. This is about a silly little phone app. You see, last fall, my husband got me a new android smart phone. After which, we searched the app store to see what fun games we could find. Angry Birds was one of those games. If you have never played, the object of the game is to shoot various types of cartoon birds at some green pigs who hide themselves in strange looking buildings. Sound ridiculous? Well, it is...but, it's also fun and addicting. Which leads me to my next scrapbook page. Both my son and my husband liked the game so much, that at first, I barely got to use my phone. I snapped these photos of my son's cute facial expressions as he was playing the game.

Practical Scrappers March Sketch

I went on-line and found a photo of the game which had the name of the game in it. This enabled me to print it and then fussy cut the title. All of the papers, chipboard and stickers are from Crate Paper's Seasons collection. I chose them because of the birds. I only had one chipboard bird and I wanted to give the impression of the birds flying across the page. So I used the chipboard shape to trace and then cut out additional birds from the paper.  I used a white gel pen and a Martha Stewart white chalk marker to add the bird's details. My sew easy left a series of holes which simulated the birds' movement.

Scrapfit workout#40 - sketch

Having a little green pig on the page was a must. So I cut a small circle, added a green chipboard button and hand cut some ears. With some google eyes added, I now had a cute pig for my page.
 So...if you have a smart phone and have yet to try it, I highly recommend angry birds. If your family catches on and steals your phone, well...take some photos and scrap them while you wait to get your phone back.
 

Fun with Flowers

  WOW...today I have posted more than I ever have before. Who would have thought that someone like me would go from no blog to posting almost daily. Part of the reason this has happened is due to all of the great on-line challenges I have found. This current challenge is all about flowers and it's over at Practical scrappers. http://www.practicalscrappers.com/2010/06/this-weeks-challenge-is-flowers.html So I thought I would post a couple of recent flower favorites from my lay outs.

  Flowers are really a tough challenge for me. Having a boy means finding ways to get creative when using flowers. One would think I wouldn't have a lot of flowers in my stash...but well, let's just say those lovely little paper flowers sing a siren song when I am at my LSS. And when my friend offered me some scrap pieces of felt flower strips, how could I say no?Needless to say, it's not all rocket ships and robots in my stash. SO...just what does one do when they have a boy and flowers in their stash? Well, you can look for another subject to scrap about as I did here in Lil' Visitor.

This little bird flew into our utility room. I am sure he doesn't mind that I scrapped him with the purple and green of the The Color room's palette. Purple is also a color challenge for me as it's not always a boy's color.

For club CK's Challenge 16, I chose a flower as an accent for my favorite May moments. It worked well with scrapbook challenges sketch 202 and fit the theme of "May'.

When in doubt, add girls to the photo. "Seriously!" as my son likes to say. Two of DS' best friends are girls. So when they appear in the photos, I try to sneak in some girly color or flowers. Our female cat, Sweetpea, is also the subject of many an LO and the perfect excuse to use pink.

I hope you can find creative ways to use up the supplies that challenge you the most, be it a color or a type of item, like flowers.                                                                                                                         

Crazy About Stars

I recently read a tutorial about making folded paper stars...and now I am hooked. I just have to figure out what else I can fold or crease. I will admit, that on my last 3 layouts, I have found an excuse to add a paper star.
To learn how to make a folded star, go here:
http://scrapbookandcardstodaymag.typepad.com/scrapbook_cards_today_blo/2010/06/paper-stars-with-kimber-.html

For the current Studio calico blog challenge :
 http://studiocalico.blogspot.com/2010/06/be-bold-challenge.html  and for the challenge over on Frosted designs: http://frosteddesigns.blogspot.com/2010/06/tgif-and-you-know-what-that-means.html , I created this layout about my son and his obsession with me taking his photo while he's underwater. All of the photos were taken using a disposable underwater camera. While I wish I had a nice digital underwater camera or the adaptor for my digital one, I find these cameras work pretty well. I love the bold turquoise color of the photographs...and when I matched the red cardstock to my son's red shirt, I loved the boldness of the color combo. So I chose to stick with these two colors for the whole layout. I cut the star using my cricut, but you could use any die cut or star punch. You could also trace a star cookie cutter. Use your bone folder to crease and fold the star. I folded and refolded a few times to make the creases more pronounced. I chose to add diamond stickles to the star so they would match the chipboard alphas(manufacturer unknown).it doesn't show well in the photo, but the alphas have glitter on them. To help the star keep it's dimension and to help adhere it to the page, I glued part of a cotton ball inside. The ribbon is from Cosmo Cricket's Honey Pie. Since the colors and title were so bold, I chose to keep the layout more simple.

I hope you'll be seeing some stars on one of your next layouts.
Update: and thanks to a comment from craftygirl...I just submited this Lo to Pratical scrappers. Thank you for the tip!

Danger! Sharks!!!

A few years ago, we had the wonderful opportunity to go on a deep sea fishing excursion near Nassau,Bahamas. it also happened to be my son's first ever fishing trip. I ended up with a lot of great photos! So many, that I ended up with two 2-page Layouts!

  I created this first LO  using a sketch from Let's scrap.
http://letsscrap.ning.com/photo/ls128-november-25?context=album&albumId=2186252%3AAlbum%3A94293

I have been wanting to scrap these photos for a long time. I had even bought a specialty paper from Wubie papers for this LO. However, for the longest time, I never knew how I wanted to work with that paper. Now that I am doing more fussycutting, I felt a little more confident about cutting the paper. I cut a slit along the fishing rod which allowed me to slide in a photo of my son and, at the same time, hide someone's arm that had gotten into the shot. I had so many oddly sized photos that I wanted to use. So, on the right hand page, I tore a strip of DCWV white core cardstock. This allowed me to group like photos together while distracting from the various sizes.

The 2nd LO utilized a Sketchy Thursday's 5-27-10 sketch:
http://sketchythursdays.blogspot.com/2010/05/527-sketch-challenge.html

 I loved the way that the words wrapped around the borders on the sketch...but every time I tried to type a word border or write one, I was unhappy with the results. I have seen a lot of color on color punches used lately and have wanted to experiment with the look. So I used my cricut and cut arrows and "Danger Shark" with the Cry Kitty font in white cardstock. I then created a border around the edges. The red "danger" signs are fussy cut from a sheet of Creative imaginations transparency. I cut the sharks using an SVG file on my cricut and then sprayed them with Sapphire glimmer mist. For the background, I framed the white 12x12 cardstock so i would leave a white border...and then spritzed the center with Patina Glimmer mist. I journaled on leftover paper strips, then inked the edges with Colorbox Prussian blue. Overall I like the results...it's just hard to keep the page flat as the glimmer mist made it buckle a little.

On a side note...I have just found another great challenge site: http://www.practicalscrappers.com/

and I hope to submit this page there for the vellum and transparency challenge.